Ciena Honored by AT&T as Outstanding Supplier

HANOVER, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Commitment to excellence over the past year has earned Ciena® Corporation (NAS: CIEN) , the network specialist, recognition as a 2013 AT&T Supplier Award winner for its support of affiliates of AT&T*, one of the world's leading data, voice, wireless and Internet services providers.

"We are proud of our long-standing tradition of providing unparalleled, innovative products and services to our business and residential customers," said Tim Harden, president of AT&T Supply Chain and Fleet Operations. "We're successful on that front in large part thanks to extraordinary suppliers like Ciena that consistently go above and beyond, exceeding our expectations and helping exceed those of our customers as well."

Ciena was one of only six suppliers to receive the 2013 AT&T Supplier Award for its work in helping AT&T deliver outstanding service to its customers during the past year. Ciena was recognized for its contributions across a broad scope of criteria including creative cost management solutions, teamwork, customer service, product/service performance, sustainability, and supplier diversity results.

"We are incredibly honored to once again receive this recognition from AT&T, a long-time strategic collaborator with Ciena," said Gary Smith, president and CEO at Ciena. "For more than 15 years, including as a provider in multiple network domains, we have worked with AT&T to help them meet the ever growing demands on their network and deliver world-class services to their customers. As the next shift in network architecture gets underway, we look forward to continuing our collaborative efforts with AT&T to drive network innovation."

As part of its annual Supplier Award Program, AT&T took out a half-page ad in the May 14 edition of The Wall Street Journal to publicly thank the selected companies.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About Ciena

Ciena is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with OPn, its approach for building open next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. We routinely post recent news, financial results and other important announcements and information about Ciena on our website. For more information, visit www.ciena.com.

Note to Ciena Investors

Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-Q, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 13, 2013. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.